What you need to know
- Paramount Plus has announced that they will be increasing prices on both of their streaming plans starting June 27th.
- The ad-supported Essential plan will now cost $5.99 per month (formerly $4.99), while the Premium plan will jump from $9.99 per month to $11.99 per month.
- The price hike is the first big change since Paramount first announced its plans to combine Paramount Plus with the Showtime app.
- This price increase is part of Showtime's integration into the Paramount Plus platform.
- Paramount Plus will continue to offer its 7-day free trial.
It's been a busy week in the streaming world.
HBO Max officially became Max, Netflix finally began its much-maligned crack down on password sharing, and yes, Paramount Plus has announced that they will be increasing their prices on June 27th. To be fair, we've known about this impending price increase since February, but we didn't know the exact date until now.
Because of this price hike, the ad-supported Essential plan will jump from $4.99 to $5.99 per month, while the price of the Premium plan will go from $9.99 to $11.99 per month. Both new and existing Paramount Plus customers will experience the price increase. The good news is that the latter plan will also come with everything found in the Showtime app built right in, a result of the merger that was announced earlier this year.
Until now, if you wanted to enjoy content from both platforms in a single app, you had to pay $11.99 per month for the Paramount Plus with Showtime bundle. This upcoming price increase essentially removes that option altogether and integrates it into the Premium plan.
While nobody ever enjoys an unexpected price hike, it seems like a logical solution that will probably result in more subscriptions in the long run. After all, even at $11.99 monthly, that ad-free tier is still considerably cheaper than equivalent offerings from Netflix, Disney Plus, and Max.
